


Moth

by Mx_Dragon



Category: Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Anal Sex, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mutilation, Not Safe Sane and Consensual, Psychosexual Violence, Sexual Violence, Vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:27:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24012082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mx_Dragon/pseuds/Mx_Dragon
Summary: There is an awakening of sorts that occurs in Silent Hill; needless to say, there is also a death. James sees another shape step out of the fog.(Originally published from July 6, 2008 to June 13, 2012 on AdultFanfiction under the name screamer1234.)
Relationships: Mary Shepherd-Sunderland/James Sunderland, Walter Sullivan/James Sunderland
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. Inquiries

James was lost.

James was so totally fucking lost it wasn’t even funny.

The _other_ world of rust and blood and rot was worse, oh, yes, without a thought—James’ mind shied away reflexively, as if even thinking of it would bring the sirens and burning and the _dark_ —but this foggy world, though relatively safe, had its own brand of unpleasantness. The oatmeal-thick stuff licked at his legslike a giant dog deciding whether or not it was worth eating him. He jumped constantly and whirled to face rolling blank grey-white when he _knew_ there was something there. Once a tendril had reached up to stroke the nape of his neck. He’d had his Beretta in hand—loaded, of course—and had nearly blown off his fucking foot. It was cold as hell, and not only was it heavier than fog had any right to be, it… _moved_ …in ways fog shouldn’t. It had a presence. When James was so tense he was panting, when his terror fed on itself until he was sure his heart would explode—then there would be a heavy, bitter salt in his mouth. And he would know without thinking that _this is what hatred tastes like_ , and in his mind see white-hot eyes burning in the dark. It was like the goddamn _breath_ of the town, the unholy breath of what lay waiting beneath it for foolish mortals’ tread. At least in the ( _inthedark_ ) other world he could use his flashlight, no matter if it was risky; here, if the fog was thick, it was like being buried under fathoms of snow. The flashlight was totally useless. And right now it was thicker than he’d ever seen it.

James could have been in the middle of Rosewater Park, or wandering up and down Nathan Avenue, or about to fall off Brookhaven Hospital’s roof, or standing at the fucking front desk of the Lakeview Hotel, and he wouldn’t have known the goddamn difference.

Except he could see a man, at least one short Silent Hill block away, far enough he shouldn’t have been able to see anything at all.

He was blonde and somehow familiar, but it wasn’t Eddie. This man was tall—would have been taller than James if he weren’t slouching—long-haired, and wearing a blue coat that reached below his knees. The coat was streaked and stained with what might have been dirt but what James was fairly certain was blood. This should have been alarming, but after repeatedly startling the shit out of himself in the few intact shop windows still clean enough to throw a reflection, James knew he looked even worse.

The man didn’t appear to be headed anywhere. Or doing anything, really. He was just standing there, looking around like a valet trying to remember where he parked that damn Mercedes. James’ mouth quirked in an atrophied smile. “Hey, you lost as I am?” he mumbled; after days weeks months _whatever_ in this pit, he no longer had any problem talking to himself. _Maybe this one won’t be crazy?_ Although, this place being what it was, that wasn’t likely. Still, it would be nice not to be alone. He sighed, then took a breath to yell out to him.

But his chest deflated like a leaky balloon when the stranger suddenly faced him. He studied him with an unnerving gaze at once sickly, obsessively avid and blank as fly-blown death. And he grinned.

It was an on-the-verge-of-giggles grin, a positively manic grin, like that of a four-year-old bursting at the seams to let slip a secret. He held up one finger and slowly wagged it. If James had not understood, the matching shake of his bedraggled blond head would have made it perfectly clear.

Even at this distance, James could see his lips moving. Two words. Three syllables.

_Uh-uh, James._

And then his grin split so wide and crazed he seemed to grow demon teeth.

And then the fog rolled in—or he rolled out—and the blue-coated man was gone.

It was several moments before James could even think. When he did, his first thought was not _Who the hell was that?_ or _How did he know my name?_ It was: _Which question was he answering?_


	2. Procession

When James saw him again, he was filleting his way through a pack of patient demons. And, from the manic grin on his face, having a hell of a time.

 _Appropriate choice of words_ , James thought.

He dispatched three demons in as many seconds with a disturbingly accurate pistol shot to each twitching head. Their bodies hadn’t fallen flat before he’d whirled and struck down two more. And another. And another.

But the last one slithered and skittered and reared up behind him almost too quickly for James’ eyes to register. It shuddered bodily and its chest gaped in a way he recognized. He’d seen that thick black tar eat through cars, and no matter how fast or freaky with a gun the blue-coated man was, there was no way he could move in time.

“Look out!” he shouted despite himself, but he didn’t need to do that because the man spun around and punched his bare fist straight through the drooling hole and out the other side with a clear, squelching _crack_.

A too-human shriek ripped through the air, quickly crescendoed and guttered into silence. The man withdrew his arm, letting the demon thud wetly to the ground. His hand smoked obviously. He wiped it casually, albeit with a distinct expression of annoyance, on his coat. Clean, it shone red and wet in the manner of a third-degree burn, but even as James watched, stunned, the burn crawled into itself and disappeared.

Then he turned to stare straight at James. He smiled, and for that James was grateful—they were a lot closer now and he didn’t think he could handle that utterly unhinged grin again—but even so, the blue-coated man was walking unhurriedly towards him and James was paralyzed like he’d only been in the face of that awful Red Pyramid.

He stopped about six feet away—a polite distance, James’ mind gibbered, a courteous madman who read etiquette manuals on his lunch break and always knew what fork to use when stabbing debutantes. Just to shut up his brain, which was nearing hysterical meltdown, James blurted, “Wh-what’re you doing here?”

And the man said, simply, “Looking for my mother.”

A pale, exhausted girl echoed him wanly in James’ mind, but no—the fervid, haunted look in this man’s eyes was superficially similar, but where Angela’s had been lonesome pools where girls pined away for the love of a fairy king, his were like endless, evil labyrinths of ancient forest. A forest where travelers had as much to fear from the trees as from any wild beast or brigand, that burned at their unseen centers with hell- and holy fire—as if those weren’t the same in this town. James knew he shouldn’t, but he did anyway.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The man grinned and that ocean-deep, Hell-deep madness cracked the surface and shone bright and screaming. He responded in a voice like serpents sliding together through reeds.

“My name is Walter Sullivan.”

James suddenly knew why he seemed familiar. _Ten hearts. Ten hearts in ten days._ All over the news, every channel, practically every hour. Walter Sullivan, the serial killer who pulled out hearts, neatly sewed up the holes like a goddamn A-plus Home Ec project, and signed his murders with his own name. In cursive.

James was pulled back and forth between screaming and a high, cracked, hysterical laugh so hard that it was ultimately easier to just lean over and throw up.

When there was nothing left he raised his head shakily. “I thought—” he began. There was no one.

The fog made a soft _shush_ ing noise. It was thicker than ever.  
  


* * *

  
The nurse slumped and charged him, steel pipe glinting wet red in his flashlight beam.

( _dark god so dark like something fucking ate him_ )

Her arm rose to swing but he drove his own pipe three inches into her head and she crumpled like a card house

( _something smelled it smelled so horrible_ )

and when she _it_ fell, he pulled his weapon out with a loud, sexual sucking noise that set his heart pounding

( _could feel the dark snaking its tentacles around him squeezing worming up his nose into his eyes so he’d never see again_ )

because even that insignificant sound would bring more of her malformed, ever-angry, ever-hungry kin. This was her last little revenge—to bring the rest of Hell down on him, as if it were not already there.

( _never get back never be let into the light again_ )

She struggled to pull herself up on her hands. She ( _no_ it’s an _it_ ) ignored the heavy pipe lying beside her and began dragging herself towards him, hate coming off her like heat. A heavy, feline growling pulsed the air, growing louder, pushing at him, _crushing_ at him. The caving, black-drooling wound on the side of its head shifted, squeezed, seemed to pout, then opened wide like a mouth—no, not a mouth. Like a—

Like a dark, wet, _eager—_

And suddenly the distinction between anger and hunger and numbing fear was lost in the gory, slimy dark and James brought his pipe down hard over her tumored face. The squelching, muffled crunch of bone was almost obscenely satisfying. She jerked, slipped, and did not rise, but he hit her again, again, _again_ all over her lovely filthy body, her fragile arms, her birdlike ribs, her curving back, her shapely legs in their sheer white hose jumping like she was startled. Some pus- and bloody-slick feeling was slithering cold into hot between his stomach and spine, but maybe that was just what adrenaline left behind when it raged through a body hard enough to turn it mad, to tear it down. James beat her until she was pulp unrecognizable but for her high heels and soiled white cap.

At last he slowed and finally stopped to pant, bent over, hands clutching his knees. He was shaking so hard he could barely keep his feet. He kept his eyes resolutely shut.

James might otherwise have seen a man in a long blue coat perched casually on a rust-eaten scaffold, watching him as closely as James had watched him. He might otherwise have seen the man turn to the hall stretching black and ravaged behind him, might have seen his lips move in quiet, smooth speech and then curve rapaciously. As it was, he did not, and the sirens covered the low laugh that floated out from the infinite dark.


	3. Sleep

James woke up.

There was softness under his body, a greater softness under his head. He could smell a distantly familiar perfume. Talcum powder. Clean sweat.

It was bewildering.

A soft mew startled him. He jolted away, slipped over a sudden edge, and fell hard onto a wooden floor. Covers shifted; he realized, belatedly, that he had been lying on a bed.

“James?” The voice was female and sleepy and James felt his heart contract at the sound of it.

“Can’t be…” he mumbled. He stared as her face appeared at the edge of the bed.

“Honey, are you okay?” asked Mary, concern bright in her eyes.  
  


* * *

  
He was on his feet and squeezing her to him in seconds. “Oh my God, Mary—I had this dream—you were so sick, I couldn’t do anything and then you died, except you sent me a letter and I went to this place that was like Hell and I—”

He stopped when he felt her gentle arms around him. Her voice was gentle, too. “It’s all right, it was just a dream. I’m right here, see? I’m right here.” She started stroking his hair and he fought down the sudden knot in his throat.

He pulled away, in a movement that was almost a spasm. “I’m fine. I’m sorry. It’s just that…” James looked down at her lovely face. At his Mary, who he thought he’d lost forever. He swallowed. “It’s just that it was so—”

A soft kiss cut him off and he stiffened in shock. Then he returned it eagerly, gratefully, drinking in her faint flowery smell, her cool fingers on his face, every softness and sweetness he had gone so long without. There was no way he could not deepen such a kiss; that godforsaken place had all been a dream, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of having been away for years, _centuries_ , lost in the fog and the horrible, man-eating dark without her. She smiled against his mouth, then parted her lips, indulged him, opened herself to him. She tasted just like he remembered. And just like James, just like the selfish thing he was, he couldn’t stop himself from wanting more.

They kissed harder, deeper, and her willingness was like a need that went down to his ruined soul. She made a soft, wanting noise; he returned it as a deep and raspy groan. Her mouth opened to him a little more each moment, more, more, until her jaw unhinged and her teeth closed around James’ head.

He screamed shrilly and shoved and punched at her in a frenzy of fear, heels slipping on the hardwood floor, but Mary held him fast. She lunged forward to take him in up to his collarbone and everything turned dark and wet. Her throat pressed in on him from all directions and he couldn’t get his breath, he was smothering, but he couldn’t stop himself from shrieking all his air away.

He could feel her teeth closing, releasing, closing around him as she choked him down. The muscles of her esophagus rippled around his body, squeezing him to death, hauling him inescapably into the eye-aching scarlet dark. A bloody, chunky reek was filling his mouth, and James didn’t know if he’d torn his throat with his own howls or if it rose up from the airless, distended starvation inside his beautiful Mary.

James woke up again, but this time he was screaming.  
  


* * *

  
He quickly clapped his hands to his mouth. It was just a dream—just an awful, sickening, _horrifying fucking dream_ —but this was the real world, this was Silent Hill, and that loud, piercing noise would raise every monster’s head from Rosewater Park to the lowest crumbling depths of Toluca Prison. He pressed his back more firmly against cold, rough brick—he remembered now, he’d huddled here to hide in the ( _dark_ ) from a seemingly invincible pack of strange, new, tentacle-tongued dog-creatures—and for two minutes simply panted, hands firmly over his mouth to stop the hysteria that he could feel was still boiling in his stomach. He prayed that nothing had already heard him.

But, as usual, Silent Hill did no such lowly thing as listen to his prayers.

From around the corner rose the screech of metal on concrete. A heavy, booted tread. A bellowing roar that enfolded all animal frustration and rage in a single solid noise. There was only one thing it could be, and in a few more steps, it would be blocking his only way out.

 _Don’t see me, don’t hear me, oh God, oh God, oh God oh God oh—_ His breath was coming in lewd pants. James tried to curl even tighter into himself, but some whimper, some beat of his living heart must have given him away because that awful red helmet was staring _right at him_. His eyes flinched shut in some kind of alien instinct. Running would be pointless. In a way, it was almost a relief.

But there came no rapid steps, no roar, no thick metal bludgeoning through his fragile flesh and bone. No deliverance. James waited, trembling. Finally, certain all he’d see would be the blackness inside the monster’s helmet, he opened one eye.

The Pyramid Head was watching him, as if waiting. As if it had been waiting for him to look at it again. Then it inclined its head and gestured towards itself with one gloved hand.

James’ jaw dropped. There was no mistaking that gesture: _Come here._

The monster began to walk away. James stumbled to his feet and followed.  
  


* * *

  
It led him through the foggy streets of Silent Hill, turning this way and that onto streets James knew were ruined or blocked, but his radio was dead quiet and even the fog seemed to part for his demon. So why not the roads—why wouldn’t they mend themselves for it? Hell, why wouldn’t they raise up into the air, rearrange themselves, and come back down in a new labyrinth every time he closed his eyes?

Thinking about it made James want to lie down on the grimy asphalt and wait to die. So he stopped thinking about it.

At last they came to the blocked-off construction tunnel where he’d picked up his plank. The silence was oppressive; the only thing that swirled the fog was his own fidgeting. James looked over at the pale demon, trying to ignore how the fog lay peacefully around its feet. It was staring at him again.

The nervous exhaustion already trembling his muscles suddenly threatened to pull him to the ground. Frustration added itself up in a rush. Fuck the Red Pyramid. Fuck this cryptic puzzle shit. “There’s nothing _here_!” he nearly shouted, his voice cracking like a teenager’s.

The monster just kept staring. Cold sweat prickled at the nape of his neck; it itched. He didn’t dare move. Finally, it raised its free arm and pointed straight into the dark maw.

Of course.

A good, clean bullet through his own soft palate had to be better than whatever was waiting for him in there—and not only would he have to walk into that blackness, he’d have to turn his back on his deadliest, most persistent predator. But the town had never taken his hand like this. Everything had always been sticking his hand in toilets and solving puzzles devised by mental patients. Always searching every filthy room, panic and despair rising up in him like bile, for whatever ridiculous, dumbass clue or key this place had seen fit to dangle in front of him. To _require_ of him. He’d have to be a moron to pass this opportunity up. So he took a shaky breath, and another, and another, and when he thought he might pass out he strode in quickly before he could change his mind.

The shadows and the smell of fog-wet dirt deepened the further he went in. He thought of little teeth, a tight, rolling throat, the scent of perfume, and somehow managed not to scream.

The tunnel was longer than he remembered. Darker, too…something was hanging on the chain link fence in the back, silhouetted, blocking the little light that could struggle through the fog. James didn’t want to know what that something was. He looked anyway—and it took all his self-control to keep down what little there was in his stomach.

Angela had shrunk from his hand and backed away up a burning staircase, Eddie was…Eddie was gone ( _gotwhathe deserved_ ), and he’d sworn that he’d be damned if he let another one go.

But here he was. Damned, apparently.

Laura was bound tight to the fence by barbed wire, looped around her limbs and through gaps in the chain link. Her body was laid open completely, each muscle and nerve carefully peeled and pinned until bone glistened white under red. The cuts were clean and surgical from her forehead to her chest, where they began to grow ragged. Her lower legs were a barely-ordered mess, as if the horrible artist had been unable to hold back any longer and simply mutilated her in one long orgasm of violence. Her arms ended in soggy red stumps, and as he gazed longer at her face in the dim light, he realized that small fingers protruded from her eyes and mouth.

No. This wasn’t happening— _was_ it, was it punishment, was something like this waiting for him? Laura had called him stupid, stepped on his hand, locked him in a room full of strangling monsters, and generally been a high-pitched irritant of the highest caliber, but she was still a _little girl_.

The little girl his wife had always wanted.

James retched. Even as he cowered away, backing deeper into the dark, James was fumbling rounds into his gun. Even the crush of filthy grief and horror and guilt like lead poisoning, even the painful certainty she was already dead ( _nono didn’t you hear that noise?_ )—all of it was overwhelmed by the frenzy to just _kill it_ before she spat out those fingers and gaped her mouth wide for him like he knew she would. This wasn’t anything special. Just something else. Just something else for him to dream about.

A smooth voice _right fucking behind him_ purred, “Do you like it?”

Without a thought James whirled, punched Walter hard in the gut with pistol still in hand, and hauled him by his coat collar into the tunnel wall. He panted for a moment, harshly swallowed back his nausea, and snarled, “You sick fuck!”

The brief startled expression on Walter’s face triggered a hot, alien clutch in his stomach that he didn’t want to acknowledge. He had to fight off the urge to…to just keep _going_. Keep hitting him. Cave in his face and ribcage, beat him to a pulp, leave him a worse mess than

( _that nurse_ )

He gritted his teeth. Walter looked as nonplussed as he could while his unkempt face was lit up by a bizarre, satisfied, childishly _proud_ smile. Before James could collect his thoughts, he said, “What, you don’t like it? I thought you’d like it.”

James growled, “Why the fuck would I like it?”

“You wanted it, didn’t you? Nothing happens in this town without you wanting it.”

His hands loosened in surprise. “W…what? What are you—”

Walter took the opportunity to shrug out of his grip and walked coolly towards the back of the tunnel. James noticed a handle sticking out of his pocket and a tapering outline that could only be a very large knife. For whatever reason, he followed him. But he kept his eyes off Laura.

He slid his gun back into his pocket, letting his hand linger on the stock. “Hey,” he said quietly.

Walter’s head turned.

“They showed your story on TV. You killed yourself ten years ago. They showed the—the pictures of your neck. Nobody could survive that.” James swallowed hard in spite of himself. “I don’t think you’re real.”

There. He’d said it. He didn’t know what he expected—that Walter would fall down dead, fade into the fog and never come back, scream and melt into a tarry puddle at his feet like the fucking Wicked Witch of the West.

Whatever he expected, it didn’t happen. The other man’s face didn’t even change. “If I’m real to you, then I’m real,” he said nonchalantly. “It’s not complicated.”

“Y—” James started. He tried again. “You know what I mean!”

Walter just kept staring with those haunted forest eyes. There was an odd sensation in his head, almost like the red squares. Like cold fingers trawling through his brain. And a hot, slimy, red-yellow-black tongue rising up to meet them.

“If I’m not real, then why are you afraid of me?” he said.

James couldn’t answer that one. Walter turned his gaze again to Laura’s horrible parody of a face, a slight smile still on his lips.

James looked up at Laura and shut his eyes. That heavy, hateful salt was in his mouth again; the taste of ash chased it, barely, stronger than it should have been. He remembered sitting at the kitchen table after Mary would gently but firmly put her foot down and tell him to _go home, you need your rest, you’ve got work tomorrow_. Sitting at the kitchen table and lighting one cigarette right after the other, the way people do when time is running out. He didn’t notice Walter edging nearer until strange stagnant breath was fanning over his face and by then it was too late to stop the soft, oddly tentative kiss. It was barely anything: a touch of chapped lips to the corner of his mouth, like the brush of a wing, gone before James could widen his eyes or jerk back his head.

“We have something in common, you know.” Walter paused. He licked his lips thoughtfully. “You taste like ashes.”

James paled. After Mary died

_liar liar liar such a FUCKING LIAR_

he’d thrown out every cigarette in the house and flushed his lighter down the toilet. More importantly, though, he hadn’t even told this crazy son of a bitch his _name_ , let alone that he used to smoke. Let alone that he’d been convinced he’d caused whatever made her cough her lungs out and seethe with hideous pain like hot driving nails every hour of every day. Of course, having no way of knowing his name hadn’t stopped him from _using_ _it_ —

He forced himself to relax, like shoving down the lid on the overstuffed trunk that was his mind. It had to be a coincidence. Walter was crazy, right? Who knew what he was even talking about?

Walter tilted his head and James got the horrible feeling he’d been watching his thoughts reel along behind his eyes, as obvious as a movie.

“Mother…what’s all this?” he asked, in a strange tone somewhere between put-out and mocking. “I know a lot about you, James Sunderland.”

And suddenly the fear was like claws squeezing his chest and he jerked up the muzzle of his Beretta straight into that bloodspattered face. God (or the Devil) knew he’d been practicing long enough and abruptly, loudly, Walter didn’t have a face anymore. He slumped forward and down into the dirt with a reassuringly wet, heavy _thud_.

But the claws kept squeezing. Every breath came harder, shallower, more like a wheeze. James groaned and fell to his knees, then his hands, as if he were being pulled. Shadows felt their way up his vision, a black sleep pushing him down into the fog-wet dirt, but it was okay because all of a sudden he was just so fucking _tired_. He was fine with that. As long as he didn’t dream, it was fine.

The dark opened wide. Then it swallowed.  
  


* * *

  
James did not see Laura come back together like a red, red rose blooming in reverse, hop off the fence, and go on her way. Perhaps it was better that he did not.


	4. Deus

James woke up.

There was softness under his body, a greater softness under his head.

Terror seized him again, claws squeezing, but as he struggled to sit up, the scent of mildew and faint rust flooded his nostrils. His eyes opened to a pocked, mold-stained ceiling and a flood of light from the bay windows along one wall. The feel of the mattress beneath him was familiar, as was the corner of the bland commercial painting he could glimpse on the wall: Lakeside Hotel. Room Three-One-Two.

He relaxed. This was real; this was Silent Hill. As bad as it was, it was not another dream. He propped himself up on his elbows and something occurred to him. _How…did I get here?_

A glance revealed the man in blue, quietly watching from a desk chair pulled to the side of his bed. Walter’s eerie eyes were locked with his own and James braced himself for another crush of panic, but none came. _Maybe I’m just too tired_ , he thought. _Finally exhausted from all the bullshit and insanity this place has thrown at me._ His voice was as worn and threadbare as he felt when he asked, “What are you doing here?”

_Hah. That’s a nice thought—I’ve used up all my fear._

“I brought you here,” Walter replied. He turned his palms upwards; the motion was fluid, as his motions always were. “Carried you. In my own two hands.”

A ripple of anger and weakness nearly closed James’ throat, forcing him to spit his words. “W…why? Why would you…do that? What…am I…to you?”

Walter tilted his head. James wished he wouldn’t do that. The movement was far too slow, smooth, unperturbed, utterly expressionless, somehow infinite. It made it far too clear that the man before him was not even remotely human.

Then he did something that James liked even less. He rose up suddenly—the movement couldn’t be called _standing_ —and planted his arms on either side of James’ body. His fear rushed back as a writhing erupted in his guts, crawling and squeezing through his chest, whipping itself up his throat and out through his mouth.

( _you lost me thought you lost me how could you ever think so wrong_ )

No, no, God, what was this _thing_ thrashing to escape from him—

( _so good so so good at lying to yourself when I_ own _you darling child_ )

“Only hate can make someone so patient.” Walter’s voice ran like a thick river under the mad, chittering howls in James’ mind as he bent closer. “My mother’s asleep, so deep in sin, and it’s from deepest sin that she must rise…” Their lips met and James could only witness, horrified, as a long black tongue shot from his own mouth, stretching his jaws until they ached, to caress Walter’s face, plunge between his lips, tighten around his neck, squeeze until his struggles left him limp and defenseless and oh _yes_ —

—ohGod it was gone, too real to be real, and Walter was speaking again. “I know who you are. Do you want to know?”

But Walter’s lips were wet and a strange dullness was in his eyes—a newly fanned heat, a hunger in the way he stared down at him. James suddenly noticed that his own lips were also wet and tingling. _That…ugh, that disgusting bastard!_ Anger swept away his lingering fear; his strength was seeping back at last, faster and faster. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I know what you are. So do you. This is your kingdom and these are your creatures. You are Mother and Father and God…deep down, O murderer of Mary Shepherd, you _know_. Your guilt eats you alive even after you made yourself forget—”

“That’s enough!” He surged up, fury flowing from his abdomen like magma, and cracked Walter across the face with a vicious right hook. He stumbled back and James hurled himself after him, out the door and into the hall. Every hit crunched and resounded, every strike was exhilarating, so _satisfying_ , and Walter’s eyes glittered so hot with pain that James’ body seemed to act by itself. He felt possessed, overtaken by some yellow-hot, rust-red, salt-black malevolence, licking straight up and fevering his brain—James was on him, sinking his teeth into whatever flesh they could find, a hand, he was biting Walter’s filthy hand and Walter was…laughing?

_(evil slick licking heaving thrashing up inside like the urge to puke, boiling-angry so he could taste it melting the salt in his mouth)_

—no, no time to think, no room to care about _why_ , just every injury and insult he’d endured in this hellhole boiled down into one simple solution. Grappling, hurting, snarling, James almost didn’t feel Walter pitch backwards until he was flying down the steep staircase after him—on _top_ of him, riding a human toboggan down the world’s bumpiest hill, until they brought up hard against the wall of the landing with a horrible, wet, mealy _crack_.

It was several panting moments before James could open his eyes, even more frightened than he’d been. He could make excuses about adrenaline all he wanted, but that _wasn’t him_ just then who’d attacked Walter. Wasn’t James who’d bitten him—wasn’t James who’d beaten him, _mauled_ him like that! He was shaking so hard that it was several more moments before he realized just what had happened.

He was straddling Walter’s limp body, the slack arms still draped about his neck; James tracked unsteadily upwards to his face, close enough to kiss. Walter’s eyes were half-closed and dull. His mouth hung open and his head lolled at an unnatural angle.

James suddenly realized just what that noise had been: the sound of Walter’s neck breaking as his head hit the wall.

Bile threatened in James’ throat. Some distant voice suggested that it might be a good idea to move _,_ move _now_ , but before he could summon the strength to heave himself off…Walter stirred.

James froze. _No. No way. This can’t happen._

But the corpse writhed, it arched up underneath him, breath sucking back into its lungs, squirming and trembling with the advent of unnatural life. Its neck straightened with a crunch almost worse than the noise of its killing snap. Walter’s fingers were digging into the tendons on the back of James’ neck, like he was trying to break it or strangle him or rip his way through to the naked spine.

And James would have obliged him all three. That force, that obscene tongue he’d felt before ( _so many times before_ , he suddenly realized _, since even before the nurse_ ) was rising back. It was struggling inside him, so forcefully that if he were less stubborn about his sanity he’d have to admit he could _feel_ it pushing his eyes out, swelling his blood vessels, like rough slimy fingers bulging out his skin from the inside. He could hear something like the ghost of a voice—no, the fetus of a voice, a voice not yet emerged into this world but so close, so _close_ —urging him on, whispering things that made him flush hot and break out in a sweat so cold it burned, purring to him that ecstasy was only inches away. He tried to pull back, but it had enlisted the cramping walls to its aid and together they were squeezing the breath out of him, squeezing the evil out of him like gristly pulp until it spurted out like marrow out of cracking bones like _no no yes oh God please_ so the world could see it, so everyone who ever saw him would know the awful buried _thing_ it was forcing up into the air on its putrefying tide.

And somehow this man, warm, panting, squirming under him, between his legs, eyes fluttering, mouth slack, back arched, pressing up like _begging_ was part of the cramp and the crush and the shame. The impulse was like a solid thing, a muscle, a body, heaving and forcing up so hard its heat flickered like aurora borealis over every inch of James’ pale, sweating skin. He felt so hot, so fled, so insane to just seize this squirming mewing thing and _force_ his way in like a heavy-jawed beast. The inner voice was screaming now, screaming to murder and fuck and annihilate and fall into a Hell where the rabid pleasure would never end.

He couldn’t resist—he crushed Walter’s mouth to his own like he was starving. But there was, somehow, a shred of humanity (or was it pride?) left at the bottom of his mind, and James clung to it. Walter’s eyes were fluttering open and James wanted so much more, but no, he’d never ever let himself take it, he _wouldn’t_! This was all he’d let himself have; he sucked the faint salt traces from the other’s lips, muscles cramping with tension, waiting for Walter to punch him in the gut or the side of the head or throw him off or just kill him right there with his bare hands like he knew he could do. His eyes closed hopelessly… _anything_. He’d accept anything.

 _Christ, as long as it_ stops _, everything stops…_

But the kiss lasted. The murderer faltered, then responded in kind. Then even fiercer, as if he were starving, too. More than starving—hungry in a way that reached into death and then past it, struggling up to James’ mouth like his ultimate purpose was being fulfilled. James couldn’t stop a mewl, awful though this was; it just felt so _good_ to be kissing someone again. After so long, the feel of another human being’s skin and breath and body heat swept over him in a warm, opiate haze.

He swallowed Walter’s startled cry as his thumbs brushed over the odd waxy gash in his neck. This was not Mary—he felt phantom teeth close over his head again and shuddered, no, not Mary, thank _God_ this wasn’t Mary—wasn’t Mary—not even a woman, maybe not even human or alive at all, but he was warm and not a monster and made little noises high in his throat that were more than enough.

As if in condemnation, the sirens lurched into their slow wail. But James did not stumble up to run. He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, so he would not have to see the frustrated disease around him climbing the walls, peeling away everything human. If he could just shut his eyes a little more, shut his ears and nose and everything but his skin, he could make himself forget. He could make himself forget who was under him. Maybe he could even make himself forget where he was.

( _It’s not like you haven’t done it before, James._ )

The red-yellow-black evil lurched up inside him again, stronger than ever. It rose from the sea of his body like a rabid god. He fought it. He lost.  
  


* * *

  
James’ eyes opened again. Pleasure was spiking in sweet waves from his groin to the base of his skull. Walter’s murderously strong fingers again dug painfully into his neck; the man himself pressed even closer than before, clinging to him with his entire body, rough face buried in the junction of his neck and shoulder. His own arms were clasped around Walter’s knotted back. A low, raw moaning pulsed and sobbed in his ears. With a start that woke him from his blissful daze, he realized that his hips were rolling. No, more than rolling. Thrusting. _Hard_.

Yet there was no friction; something slippery let them slide together and back and together again. And there was a heavy scent in the air. Heavy as the fog. A rusted, salty reek that could only be—

His stomach wrenched. James squeezed his eyes shut; he didn’t want to see what he could now feel was coating both their crotches up to the navel, soaking the shredded fabric brushing his thighs with every stroke, oozing from Walter’s—oh, God, he was horrible, he was worse than the Red Pyramid violating those mannequins, a disgusting _thing_ too depraved to be human…

Walter choked and shuddered against him. The inner muscles dragging blissfully around his length gripped hard and James’ eyes rolled back.

And that was the worst part.

It just felt so god damned _good_.

Walter shuddered again, voice low and sinuous and rough. “Oh…”

James cracked an eye and almost swallowed his tongue. The murderer was staring straight back at him, green eyes half-closed, grinning, raging, laughing, boring through his to the back of his skull. _Burning._

“Oohhh, _yes_ …” Walter breathed. His was the gaze of a snake into the eyes of a sparrow, and James was transfixed. His bones felt so fragile, so hollow—his eyes began to water almost immediately, but James didn’t dare blink. If he broke that stare, he knew, it would break him. Even though Walter was being so horrifically violated, James was the one who felt like prey. “All the right sins— _ngh!_ —in all the right places…”

(Reality stuttered and the overheated body he’d buried himself in was cold, so cold, it was slimy it was Mary and no God no God no he was _fucking a corpse_ —)

Walter’s eyes fluttered almost closed. He bared his teeth in a strange rictus somewhere between a smile and a snarl. “Oohhh, yes, sink into your sin. Filthy murderer. You— _demon_ —oh, M- _Mother!_ ” He spat each curse with such a lustful, wanton throb that the hair rose on the nape of James’ neck. He suddenly realized that it had been Walter making that noise, that agonized moaning—and it was all pleasure _,_ pleasure like tearing a body apart, like howling, like murder, like being devoured, like burning in Hell.

His weakness swallowed him up. James gripped Walter hard and thrust harder until the air coagulated with both their cries. Yet nausea twisted his stomach until he thought it would rip, until self-loathing turned it to ash. He deserved whatever punishment he got. He deserved to be flayed to the bone by the acid of patient demons, his head stove in by nurses’ steel pipes, his torso crushed between the legs of the mannequins—he shivered at the thought—ripped limb-from-limb—his thrusts sped up—his personal tormentor’s tongue squeezing and cracking his neck, that Great Knife driven through his belly so that he struggled like a pinned fly and bled down the filthy walls of his Hell and screamed his life out—

James must have screamed out loud, because a metal-edged rumble like falling rocks answered from behind him. He knew without looking that it was his tormentor, his Judgment, his Pyramid Head, but it was so good and he was so close and there was no way he could stop now. He whimpered, begging: _Please, let me come, oh God, kill me but let me_ come _…_

But there was no creak as the floorboards gave under the beast’s weight, no squeal or scrape of the Great Knife on rotting wood, even though James could fucking _feel_ it standing in the doorway not even ten feet away. It was just…watching. The tight, icy wrench of fear, far from dousing the white-hot lust burning in his gut, made it all the more urgent and unbearable.

And Walter was still moaning, like a dog struck by a car, pleading to God for the sweet end of its misery. In his distraction, however, James had not noticed how his moans had been climbing in pitch, into indeterminate yelps of agony or ecstasy or rage; they all seemed the same to this man. Walter arched like an aimed bow beneath him and James remembered with horrible clarity how he’d done that before. “Hahh, _yes_ …James…oh, _Mother_ —!” Sharp, meaningless pain, warmth sliding thin down his nape, splattering thick on his belly, and oh god _yes_ the Devil’s grip grown so tight James couldn’t help but let it drag him down to Hell. He let out a harsh, mutilated cry of desperate pleasure, every muscle shivering with the force of it until all at once they gave out and slumped him forward onto a wonderfully warm, pliant body.

 _Getupgetupgetupgetup_ … Now that heavy tread was closing the distance, but his trembling limbs wouldn’t obey. Walter’s head was tossed back, as if his neck were broken again. He didn’t move as James sat up shakily and turned, on hands and knees, to face his punishment. Whether he wanted to or not, he cowered.

 _James._ There was no sound. That one word was, instead, a thought that split his skull and sucked the little remaining strength from his limbs like marrow. James gasped and his arms buckled. His head fell, presenting the blood-streaked back of his neck to the monster. Submitting.

When no killing blow came, James gritted his teeth and half-spat, half-pleaded, “Go on, do it. Why’re you just standing there? Kill me!”

A laugh bubbled out, as if through congealing blood, into the rotted air and blossoming out from the center of James’ head until it felt like his brains were being forced out through his ears. James retched, resisted, and brought up a thin, acidic bile onto the decaying wood floor. He looked up, panting, to find the monster’s cruel metal face pointing down at him.

 _I’m not the one who shall carry out your punishment._ The laughter came again, louder, and his sudden, deranged compulsion to ask what was so funny was derailed by the feel of blood running from his ears. The pain was so hellish he barely noticed the steel butcher’s knife stabbing into his back.

The first inches shocked all at once through his muscle with a snarl that, he realized stupidly, belonged to the man behind him. Walter had to force it in irregular jerks after that, his voice sliding between singsong snarls and cackling laughter, scraping his ribs as the knife widened towards the base—and James sure as hell felt it then. It twisted rabid and vicious until he couldn’t rise at all, only lie with his face pressed into the rotting floorboards and feel his lungs fill. Lie there bleeding from his nose and mouth and eyes and ears as he felt Walter’s hot breath huff over his skin, his lips pressing almost tenderly to the nape of his neck, kissing and murmuring and licking the tacky blood his sharp nails had drawn there moments ago. His body curved warm over James’ suddenly cold back and his knife kept thrusting in, vicious, in an ever deeper parody of their just-ended embrace.

Perhaps the worst thing, James thought, was that he couldn’t turn around.

_Thank you for creating us, James. Thank you. So. Very. Much._

Yellow-hot screaming agony ate his sight to black. The last thing he saw was rust-red cruelty and the flash of a face that made his brain turn inside out with warped familiarity. The last thing he felt was cold, slippery fingers, blunted by the pain, emerging from within his flooding wound. Pulling it wider. Making way. The being inside him, the dark self, the alien body. Coming through.

The last thing he heard was a laugh, and for the life of him, James couldn’t figure out whose it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original author's note: "Thank you all for the wonderful things you've said in your AFF.net reviews and in your comments on Livejournal and Y!Gallery. Writing for this fandom has given me the practice and confidence I needed to start pursuing fiction as a profession. Since first putting gory pen to decaying paper, I've added a Creative Writing undergrad major, made plans to get a Master's degree in creative writing, and sold my first short story. I may not succeed. I probably won't. But I'm going to try."
> 
> (Have I succeeded since I first wrote this? In a way, depending on how one defines success, but for sure it's more than my past self could have ever predicted.)


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